How Development Activities Are Prioritised For Personal And Professional Development

Prioritising personal and professional development depends on a number of factors. 

Initially, it is necessary to decide which areas are urgent, as to those which are important. A person taking on a completely new role may need to be trained in a specific area before they can be left to carry out the role unsupervised. It may also mean that staff shortages, perhaps for illness or a general lack of available labour, mean that the PDP needs to be revised to suit the organisations requirements. 

A very basic example of this in my own business sector would be that any member of staff required to go onto an active construction site would need to be trained in the relevant procedures of CSCS of CSCS to prove they have the training and qualifications required to carry out their job. This would be before they were even allowed to commence training as an Asbestos Operative, so CSCS training would be an urgent requirement over important. 

In perhaps a more complex example, it may be decided that an Operative has good potential to move onto a Supervisor role, which occurred recently in my company. It was therefore important to us to focus on the long term objectives for this employee which involved him receiving more complex training over the period of a year whilst working closely with the management team as a group of experienced mentors. 

The day-to-day pressures of the working environment as well as meeting deadline means that personal professional development may have to be reorganised to adjust for the priorities of an organisation. Factors outside of work may also have an effect on the prioritisation of a PDP. 

Overall, activities need to be prioritised in terms of reasonable achievability within the organisations objectives.